A surge of press reports (The Economist, ABC, The Mirror) refers to a shortage of blood supplies in blood banks the world over. 

And yet, existing restrictions in over 40 countries –including in the UK– prevent sexually active gay and bisexual men from donating blood.

This is either indefinitely or for a lengthy period of time after they last had sex with a man, even if they practice safe sex within a monogamous relationship. Similar donor restrictions rarely apply to heterosexual people who have multiple partners and engage in risky sex without a condom.

In a bid to raise awareness about the outmoded and medically unjustified blanket restrictions on gay and bisexual men, we launched the campaign “Screen the blood, not the sexuality” for the Peter Tatchell Foundation.

As part of the campaign, we created the Gaydr, a pseudo “gay detector” device which was used to scan heterosexual men on their way to a blood bank in central London, in order to make them feel the same sense of exclusion experienced by sexually active gay and bisexual men in many countries. The spoof Gaydr scan informed straight men that they were actually gay and not allowed to donate blood.

With people’s reactions ranging from horror to humour, disbelief and dismay, the point of the campaign was to highlight the absurdity of such restrictions and the generalisations about gay and bisexual men on which they are based. 

Our aim was to support efforts to reduce the prejudiced restrictions on blood donations from men who have sex with men and to help patients in need by boosting global blood supplies.